There’s a sharp-elbowed progressive atop the Senate Budget Committee, with big ideas about corporate greed, the environment and shaking up Washington. And it isn’t Bernie Sanders.
A leading congressional critic of the fossil fuel industry plans to use his new position atop the Senate Budget Committee to continue investigating Big Oil’s alleged efforts to mislead the public about the causes and consequences of global warming.
The Senate Budget Committee is looking to hire staffers with experience investigating fossil fuel influence campaigns, a sign of how incoming Chair Sheldon Whitehouse could use the gavel to go after the industry.
Sens. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) are relatively young — at least by Senate standards — and also come from parts of the country that are facing different climate disasters.
